Re: FreeBSD on Star64 from Pine64

On Thu, 29 May 2025 08:16:19 +0200 I wrote:

> On Wed, 28 May 2025 14:47:08 -0300
> Mitchell Horne <mhorne@freebsd.org> wrote:
> 
> > Please try updating your firmware (u-boot), as Rich suggested. This
> > hardware should be supported by the version we ship in ports:
> > sysutils/u-boot-starfive-visionfive2.
> 
> OK, I had this port already built, so no problem to try it...
> 
> > This flavour of u-boot contains logic to select the appropriate DTB
> > for your hardware; you should not need to change or load anything
> > manually.
> 
> Almost, see below.
> 
> > After this I expect that booting FreeBSD should succeed, but I do
> > not have this Star64 hardware to confirm first-hand.
> 
> It took me couple of hours to get everything in line, so I am going to
> write what needs to be done in order to get somehow meaningfull
> result.
> 
> First, my attempts before was based on boot from SPI flash, where old
> U-Boot is residing. This was enough for some Linux based distribution
> to boot. At the same time, I did not want to overwrite it, so I still
> have something working, just in case.
> 
> Switch to boot from SD card is relatively easy, change boot mode
> switch selection from 00 to 01, provided you have properly prepared
> SD card. For this you actually can't use directly snapshot prepared
> by FreeBSD project, it is probably tailored for HiFive boards.
> 
> When you examine its content, you see following:
> 
> # gpart show -r md0
> =>      40  12582832  md0  GPT  (6.0G)
>         40      4056       - free -  (2.0M)
>       4096      4096    1  5b193300-fc78-40cd-8002-e86c45580b47
> (2.0M) 8192      8192    2  2e54b353-1271-4842-806f-e436d6af6985
> (4.0M) 16384    110592    3  c12a7328-f81f-11d2-ba4b-00a0c93ec93b
> (54M) 126976  12455808    4  516e7cb6-6ecf-11d6-8ff8-00022d09712b
> (5.9G) 12582784        88       - free -  (44K)
> 
> Read https://docs.u-boot.org/en/latest/board/starfive/pine64_star64.html
> and README from sysutils/u-boot-starfive-visionfive2 port, you see
> UUIDs are not correct for StarFive board, they should be
> 
> # gpart show -r da0
> =>      40  30719920  da0  GPT  (15G)
>         40      4056       - free -  (2.0M)
>       4096      4096    1  2e54b353-1271-4842-806f-e436d6af6985
> (2.0M) 8192      8192    2  bc13c2ff-59e6-4262-a352-b275fd6f7172
> (4.0M) 16384    131072    3  c12a7328-f81f-11d2-ba4b-00a0c93ec93b
> (64M) 147456  30572504    4  516e7cb6-6ecf-11d6-8ff8-00022d09712b
> (15G)
> 
> (I have slightly bigger EFI partition and use all available space for
> root filesystem, that's minor detail). It was necessary to build the
> card anew (I tried first delete just partitions 1 and 2, but that
> failed, probably some card failure) so the boot from SD card is doing
> what's expected.
> 
> Long story short, the result is
> 
> mountroot: waiting for device /dev/ufs/rootfs...
> regulator: shutting down unused regulators
> Mounting from ufs:/dev/ufs/rootfs failed with error 19.
> 
> Loader variables:
>   vfs.root.mountfrom=ufs:/dev/ufs/rootfs
>   vfs.root.mountfrom.options=rw
> 
> Manual root filesystem specification:
>   <fstype>:<device> [options]
>       Mount <device> using filesystem <fstype>
>       and with the specified (optional) option list.
> 
>     eg. ufs:/dev/da0s1a
>         zfs:zroot/ROOT/default
>         cd9660:/dev/cd0 ro
>           (which is equivalent to: mount -t cd9660 -o ro /dev/cd0 /)
> 
>   ?               List valid disk boot devices
>   .               Yield 1 second (for background tasks)
>   <empty line>    Abort manual input
> 
> mountroot> ?
> 
> List of GEOM managed disk devices:
>   
> 
> mountroot> 
> 
> Which means I need to investigate a bit more to find what the problem
> is with SD card (something in DTB, 'no bus speed provided'). See
> attached boot log. This looks promising - somehow tuning DTB should
> yield correct result, I hope.
> 
> Regards,
> Milan
>  

[ Follow-up to my mail ]

Building DTB from 15.0 sources with following commands did the trick:

cd /.GIT/FreeBSD_src/main/sys/contrib/device-tree/src/riscv/starfive
cpp -I ../../../include/ -x assembler-with-cpp jh7110-pine64-star64.dts | dtc -I dts -O dtb -o jh7110-pine64-star64.dtb

(commands based on reply from Rich Dunkle to my first mail).

I must enter 'ufs:/dev/mmcsd0p4' at mountroot prompt, but that's minor
issue, now 'login:' prompt is waiting on me :)

Milan